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After a description given of the celestial happiness of the righteous at the day of judgment, here follows the eternally miserable condition of the wicked; and eight several sorts of sinners are here summed up, who shall be excluded out of heaven, and cast into hell, namely,
the fearful, such as dare not own Christ, or for fear of suffering, have disowned him, or apostatized and revolted from him;
unbelievers, such especially as have sat under the dispensation of the gospel, but have rejected our Lord Jesus Christ, and have refused to come unto him that they might have life;
the abominable, such as live in the practice of sins against nature, sodomy, and such uncleanness as renders them abominable in the sight of God and man, Rom_1:26;
murders, such as destroy either the soul, body, or good name, of their neighbours, especially persecutors; the whore and her followers, who are drunk with the blood of the saints;
whoremongers of all sorts, both spiritual and corporal, particularly such as are guilty of uncleanness in a conjugal state;
sorcerers, such as exercise witchcraft, consult with the devil, and trade with familiar spirits;
idolators of all sorts and kinds, such as worship false gods, or the true God after a false manner; covetous persons, who make the world their god; and sensual persons, who make their belly their god; lastly,
all liars, those which lie with the lip, and talk falsely; those that lie in their lives, as all hypocrites do, whose practice gives their profession the lie; those who are the inventors of the doctrine of lies, which is no better than the doctrine of devils;
these, all these, shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, that is, in exquisite torments, and everlasting.
From the whole note, 1. How the timorous and fearful stand in the front of all those vile sinners, whose ways lead down to the chambers of death and hell.
Behold here! God's martial law executed upon cowards and renegadoes, whose fear makes them revolt from Christ in time of danger. Think of this, all you timorous and faint-hearted professors! who cannot bear the thought of lying in a nasty dungeon for owning Christ, how will you endure to lie in a lake of fire and brimstone for disowning of him! Is not the little finger of an angry God heavier than the loins of all the tyrants and persecutors in the world?
Note, 2. That although eight sorts of sinners only are here reckoned up, yet all others who live and die impenitently in any known sin, besides these, of what kind soever, are certainly included, and their damnation implied also, as well as these: for whoever lives in the habitual practice of any known sin, without converting from from it unto God, is certainly in a state of damnation.
Note lastly, That the sins here mentioned must not be understood copulatively, but disjunctively; we must not suppose that such as are guilty of all the before-mentioned sins, are the persons threatened with hell-fire; but such as are with allowance guilty of any one of these, or of any other besides these, and continuing impenitently in them.